Chanur's Homecoming

By C. J. Cherryh

The fourth volume of the Chanur saga, set in the Alliance-Union universe, featuring the alien spaceship captain Pyanfar Chanur and her human crewmate Tully.

When those strange entities called "humans" sent their first exploration ship into Compact space, the delicate power balances of the seven alien races of the Compact were catastrophically disrupted. And by giving shelter to Tully, the only human survivor of his mission, Captain Pyanfar of The Pride of Chanur jeopardized the safety of her ship and her crew by placing them at the center of a deadly political maelstrom.

Now, with a new fleet of human ships approaching Compact space and with the Meetpoint and other Compact stations nearly destroyed by rival factions, Pyanfar and her crew face the ultimate threat to their species. For their home planet lies in the path of an impending space battle which could wipe their world off the galactic maps. Will Pyanfar be able to avert disaster for her homeworld and win herself the ultimate reward—a treasure beyond measuring—an exclusive trade contract with Earth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: DAW
• Release date: Mar 5, 1991
• ISBN: 9781101663622

C. J. Cherryh

C. J. Cherryh—three-time winner of the coveted Hugo Award—is one of today's best-selling and most critically acclaimed writers of science fiction and fantasy. The author of more than fifty novels, she makes her home in Spokane, Washington.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Pride’s small galley table was awash in data printout, paperfaxes ringed and splotched with brown gfi-stains, arrowed, circled, crossed out, and noted in red and green ink till they were beyond cryptic. The red pen made another notation and another snaking arrow; and the bronze-pelted hani fist that held it flexed claws out and in again in profoundest frustration. Pyanfar Chanur sat in this sanctuary gnawing her mustaches and drinking cup after cup of lukewarm gfi amid her scribbles on the nav and log records.

Pyanfar was not her usual meticulous self—rough blue spacer-breeches instead of the bright red silk she favored, and not a single one of the bracelets and other gold jewelry she usually wore, just the handful of spacer rings up the sweep of her tuft-tipped ears. Her best pair of red silk breeches had gone for rags, perished of the same calamity which had stiffened her joints, left several knots on her maned skull, and made small puncture wounds all over her red-brown hide. Her niece’s deft fingers had tweezed out the metal splinters down in sickbay, with the help of the magnetic scanner, and patched the worst cuts with plasm and sticking-plaster. Haral, her second in command, had suffered the same, and limped about her duties on the bridge, running printouts and sitting watch in her turn, while the rest of the crew was in scarcely better shape, hides patched, manes and beards singed, with bandages here and there about their persons. That had been a memorable fight on the docks, indeed a memorable fracas; but Pyanfar could have recalled it with more pleasure if it had come to better success.

Scritch-scratch. Another note went down on the well-worn starchart. She studied it and restudied it, gnawed her mustaches and refigured, though all but the finest decimal exactitudes of current star-distances were in her memory. There were surely answers in that map; and she racked her wits to find them, to discover what the opposition planned and what her allies (treacherous though they be) might be figuring to do, and to juggle all the variables at once. The answer was there, patently there, in the possibilities of that starmap and in the self-interests of eight separate and polylogical species.

Knowing all the options, all those self-interests, and all the capabilities of the ships involved, a hani merchant might conceivably manage to think of something clever. She needed something clever. Desperately.

She sat at Kefk, inside kifish space where no hani of right mind would ever consent to be, allied to kif no hani in her right mind would ever trust; she sat in the same space station with nervous methane-breathers (tc’a and chi) who had lately been raided (reprimanded? attacked? congratulated?) by an intruding knnn ship, which had carried off a tc’a vessel. Gods knew what was in the tc’as’ multipartite minds; the chi had no minds that any oxy breather had ever proved; and as for the knnn, no one had any least idea what they were up to. Wherever those black hair-snarls on thin black legs intruded their influence (and the power of their strange ships), things bent. Fast. But the knnn had withdrawn and Kefk occupied itself with its own affairs, like repair of its fire-ravaged docks and placating its new master, the hakkikt Sikkukkut, whose ships now numbered thirty-two (the count was rising). It occupied itself with the hani pirate Dur Tahar, lately at liberty by the hakkikt’s grace; with the mahen hunter-ship Aja Jin, lately outside the hakkikt’s good graces, and still at dock, sitting beside The Pride and not daring to send a compromising query across the dockside communication lines. Kefk had a great deal to worry about, not least of which was the missing hunter-ship Mahijiru and its captain, one Ana Ismehanan-min, aka Goldtooth, and the hani ship that had run with him.

Along with major structural damage, a breached sector, fire, disruption of the lifesupport systems, the remnants of a revolution and other nagging difficulties.

Another flurry of figures and pen-corrections. There was, number one, the mahendo’sat territory to reckon with: a wide sprawl of stars into which at least one message had gone and might have gotten through, knnn and the gods willing. Banny Ayhar would have done her best to get it through, as much as any merchant captain could do: she might have lived to get it to Maing Tol, if the knnn had not stopped her or if the kif had not been laying for her. The mahendo’sat, tall black-furred primates with enough double-turning motives involved to baffle a tc’a’s multipartite brain (but antagonism toward their neighbors the kif was always high among them), might have made a move if that message had gotten through. Down the line via Kshshti and out to Mkks might be a good course of action for the mahendo’sat to take, if they hoped to forestall any kifish breakout along that border; but Meetpoint station or Kita Point, critical to all trade routes, was most likely the object of any major push from the mahendo’sat. That effort would have to come via Kshshti if Kita was still blocked; while Kefk, in kifish territory, was not a likely route for them. Not impossible, given the current state of borders in the Compact, just less than likely.

Also reckoning mahendo’sat moves, it was very likely there were one or more mahen hunter-ships escorting the human ships; and they were coming in toward Meetpoint from Tt’a’va’o and tc’a/chi space.

With human ships and human captains; still another set of motives and self-interests, on gods-knew-what orders from their own authorities. (Or lack of them—who knew what human minds were like?)

Further complication: kifish forces under the rival hakkikt Akkhtimakt had likely moved in to take the mahen/tc’a station at Kshshti. That might stand off any mahen flanking move to Meetpoint, if Akkhtimakt’s forces still controlled Kita as well. Akkhtimakt might have Kita, Urtur, Kshshti, or all three, and advance from any or all of those points against Meetpoint and/or Kefk itself, if the report Goldtooth had brought was true and the stsho had been fools enough to invite Akkhtimakt in as hired help.

There was, lure to Akkhtimakt, his greatest enemy Sikkukkut, sitting here at Kefk gathering to his control every ship that came into port. And revenge was always high on any list of kifish motives. Pukkukkta, they called it. Advance retaliation was better than revenge after the fact. Having an enemy know his calamity before he died was best of all.

Yet another move of the pen, another arrow, lurid green: one could not exclude interference from the methane-breathers, whose motives no oxy breather could guess.

And, certainly not to be forgotten, there were the stsho who owned Meetpoint, congenitally noncombatant, but hiring alien, aggressive help right and left and forming reckless associations.

While the han—gods, the hani senate was up to its nose in politics as usual, and Rhif Ehrran was on her way to Meetpoint with evidence enough to outlaw Chanur once and for all.

The Pride of Chanur sat at a kifish dock six to seven jumps from homestar, no matter which way she figured it. Six or seven jumps was a long way, a very long way, measured in stress on ship and on body; and gods knew what would follow on her heels, if she did what she would gladly do now and broke dock at Kefk and ran for their lives, withdrawing herself like a good law-abiding hani from all the affairs of kif and mahendo’sat and multifarious aliens.

But the trouble would surely follow her home; she knew beyond a doubt that it would. She had involved herself in the affairs of kifish hakkiktun and she had acquired their notice. She had made herself a name in kifish eyes. She had gotten sfik, face. And that meant that kif would never let her alone so long as she lived.

Her uneasy partner Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin would never forget her; certainly (gods forbid he should replace Sikkukkut in power) her personal enemy Akkhtimakt would not.

Pyanfar scribbled, flicked her ears, and the rings of forty years of voyages chimed in her hearing. A pearl swung from her right ear, a Llyene pearl from the oceans of the stsho homeworld; she still wore that gift, regardless of the perfidy of the giver, who was Goldtooth, friend, traitor, flatterer, and tenfold liar.

Curse him to his own deepest hell.

Goldtooth was bound for Meetpoint with Rhif Ehrran, beyond a doubt he was, the conniving bastard. He was dealing with the stsho and anyone else who offered his species an advantage, and he was betting opposite to the alliance his own partner Jik had made—to which maneuver Sikkukkut took strongest and understandable exception.

Another scribble.

A quick movement caught her eye, a black blot speeding across the floor, sinuous, small, fast.

She leapt to her feet. Haral! she yelled, while paper cascaded off the table and the black thing paused for one beady-eyed stare before it skittered on, faster than her limping dive to stop it.

Haral appeared, hobbling in by the short bridge-galley corridor, and did a fast skip and wince as it dived between her feet and vanished.

Pyanfar snatched up a handful of jumbled papers. Fry that thing!

Sorry, captain. We’re setting traps—

"Traps be bothered, they’re breeding, I swear they are! Get Skkukuk on it, they’re his by-the-gods dinner. Let him find ’em. Gods-be mess. Vermin!" The hair stood up on her shoulders and she stared at her first officer in bleakest despair. No one in the crew was up to more orders, more duty, or more trouble.

The things might get into something vital, Pyanfar said. Common sense, covering absolute revulsion. "Gods, get ’em out!"

Aye, Haral said, in a voice as thin and hoarse as hers. And Haral limped away, to get their own private kif to ferret his dinner out of the The Pride’s nooks and crannies before something else went wrong. That took a guard, to watch Skkukuk; and gods curse the luck that had set the things free on the ship in the first place. She had heard the story, inspected the burned patch on The Pride’s outer airlock seal. And she blessed Tirun Araun’s quick hand that had gotten that door shut—vermin and all.

Gods knew how those black slinking pests had gotten up from lowerdeck.

Climbed the liftshaft? The airducts?

The thought of myriad little slinking black bodies loping along the airshafts and into lifesupport lifted the hairs at her nape.

What were the gods-be things eating?

She scooped up a last couple of papers with a wince and a grimace and sat down again. Rested both elbows on the table and rested her aching head in her hands.

She saw within her mind a dark kifish hall; sodium-light; and a table surrounded by insect-legged chairs—her partner Jik sitting there with one of Sikkukkut’s minions holding a gun to his head, and that bastard Sikkukkut starting to ask closer and closer questions.

She had not had a way to help him. She had been lucky to get her own crew out of there alive; and to keep herself and her ship as free as it was, under kifish guns at a kifish dock.

Send another appeal to Sikkukkut to ask for Jik’s release? Sikkukkut’s patience with her was already frayed. Perhaps it was personal cowardice not to send another message. Perhaps it was prudence and saving what could be saved, not to push Sikkukkut into some demonstration of his power—at Jik’s expense. Kifish heads adorned the stanchions of Sikkukkut’s ship-ramp. That image haunted her rest and her sleep. A moment’s off-guard imagining set Jik’s head there beside the others.

She opened her eyes abruptly when that vision hit, focusing instead on the maps and charts and printout, where the answer had to lie, where she was convinced it was, if she could cudgel her aching skull and battered brain just a little farther through the maze.

Jik had left them another legacy: a coded microfiche which even Soje Kesurinan, in command of Aja Jin, might not know existed. And The Pride’s computers had been running on that, trying to break that code, ever since they had gotten back to the ship and had a chance to feed it in.

*   *   *

Again, said Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin, hakkikt and mekt-hakkikt, lately provincial boss and currently rival for ultimate authority among his kind; while Jik, Keia Nomesteturjai, kif-hunter, captain, and what other rank among mahendo’sat this kifish pirate would earnestly like to know—focused his eyes with difficulty and managed a twisted grin. That tended to confuse hell out of the kif, who knew facial expressions were a second and well-developed language especially among mahendo’sat, and who had never quite learned to interpret all their nuances.

Again, said Sikkukkut, "Keia, my old friend. Where are the human ships? Doing what? Intending what?"

I’ve told you, Jik said. He said it in mahensi, being perverse. Sikkukkut understood that language, though many of his listening subordinates, standing about their table in this dim, sodium-lit hall, were not as educated. Sikkukkut, on the other hand, had a good many talents.

Interrogation was one of those. Sikkukkut had performed that office in the service of Akkukkak, of unlamented memory. All these questions, each pacing and each shift of mood Sikkukkut displayed, were calculated. It was, at the moment, the soft touch. Have a smoke, my old friend. Sit and talk with me. But now the frown was back, a slight drawing down of Sikkukkut’s long black snout. Hooded and inscrutable he sat, on his insect-legged chair, in the baleful light of the sodium-lamps, while Jik smoked and stared at him eye to eye. There were numerous guards about the shadowed edges of the hall, always the sycophants and the guards. In a little time the order would come to take him back to lowerdecks; and they would try the harder course again. Constant shifting of strategy, the hard approach and the soft, Sikkukkut usually the latter. Usually.

Jik kept himself mentally distant from all these changes, observed the shifts and absorbed the punishment with a professional detachment which was Sikkukkut’s (surely, Jik reckoned) intention to crack. And he looked Sikkukkut in his red-rimmed eyes with the sure feeling that the kif was analyzing his every twitch and blink, looking for a telling reaction.

Come now, Keia. You know my disposition, how patient I am, of my kind. I know that you had ample time to consult with your partner before the shooting started. We’ve been over these questions. They grow wearisome. Can we not resolve them?

My partner, Jik said, silken-slurred: Sikkukkut afforded him liquor, and he pinched out a dead smokestick and took a sip from the small round footed cup, and drew a long, long breath. Pleasures were few enough. He took what he could get. "I tell you, hakkikt, I wish I knew what my partner’s up to. God, you think I’d have been out on that dock if I’d known what he was about to do?" He fumbled after his next smoke and his fingers were numb. Doubtless the drink was drugged. But there were enough of them to put the drug into him another way, so he took his medicine dosed in very fine liquor and quietly gathered his internal forces. He was deep-conditioned, immune to ordinary efforts in that regard: he knew how to self-hypnotize, and he was already focused on a series of mantras and mandalas into which he had coded what he knew, down paths of dialectic and image no kif could walk without error. He smiled blandly, in secret and bleak amusement that Sikkukkut’s methods had incidentally eased the aches and the pains of previous sessions. His thoughts swayed and wove, moved in and out of focus. The docks and fire. His crew. Aja Jin. Friends and allied ships were just down the dock and as good as lightyears away. "Let me tell you, mekt-hakkikt, I know Ana’s style. Think like a mahendo’sat who knows kif, hakkikt. If he’d asked you for leave to operate on his own you’d never have given it."

Therefore he wrecks Kefk’s docks.

Jik shrugged and drew in a puff, blinked and stared at the kif beneath heavy lids. Well, but independence is Ana’s way. I’ve known him for years. He’s damn stubborn. He thinks he sees a way and he takes it. Agreements to this side and that—sure, he’s working the mahen side. And maybe the human side too. Most of all he’s gathering assets— (Careful, Keia, the brain’s fogged; stay to the narrow, the back-doubling path and lead us all round again.) Jik drew in smoke and let it out again in a shaky exhalation. "He’ll negotiate with you. Eventually. But think like a mahendo’sat. He has to get something in hand to negotiate with, something to offer you, hakkikt, to demonstrate his worth."

Like Meetpoint? You weigh upon my credulity, Keia. Silk, silk and soothing-soft. Try again.

Not Meetpoint. But some matter of substance he can come to you with. I think he means to come back to talk. But he will bring something.

Sikkukkut’s snout twitched in a dry sniffing, kifish laughter, which came for many reasons, not all of which were civilized. Like a million human ships and a great number of guns?

"Now, that is possible, hakkikt. Jik blinked and narrowed his focus still tighter on what he had resolved to say, never on what he was hiding. Find the threads of the story and stay to them, walk the narrow path, while the drug and the alcohol and the stimulants in the smoke flowed through his veins. That is remotely possible; but the advantage would be too one-sided for the humans. What good to mahendo’sat, to exchange one powerful neighbor for another of unknown potential?"

Unknown, is it?

You speak excellent mahensi. Far better than I speak your language. Mechanical translators are hardly a substitute for living and fluent brains. The best human translator we know can ask for a cup of water and say he wants trade. Now, what does that tell us about human motives, human government, human minds, a? Friend, they say. You say friend, I say friend. Do we mean the same thing? What do humans mean with that word? Assuredly Ana doesn’t know; and I much doubt he means to upend the Compact as long as he doesn’t know. Jik held up a blunt-clawed forefinger, to maintain attention to a point. "Goldtooth, our esteemed Ana, takes orders. He also interprets them freely. This is the danger in him. The Personage who sent us both knows this. Therefore he sent me to restrain Ana from his excesses. I have failed in this. But I know Ana’s limits. I am saying this to you, and you speak such excellent mahensi; but I don’t know whether you know the meaning of this word limits in the way we do. It implies the edge of Ana’s personal assumptions. Ana still obeys the Personage at Maing Tol. As I do. And I tell you that negotiation with you is in the Personage’s interest and human ships running freely through Compact space is not in those interests. Therefore I make alliance with you, as I would have made it simultaneously with Akkhtimakt if he were not the fool he is."

This pleased Sikkukkut, perhaps. The dark eyes flickered. Sikkukkut picked up his cup and the thin tongue exited the v-form gap of his outer teeth and lapped delicately at the petroleum-smelling contents. I have known mahen fools, Sikkukkut said.

Don’t number Ana among them.

Or yourself?

I hope not to be.

"I have a notion what you might have been doing out on that dockside, Keia, my friend. Ana Ismehanan-min wanted confusion behind which to depart. And someone fired the shot that touched off the riot."

Rhif Ehrran.

The hani? Come now, Keia. Hani gave no orders to the mahendo’sat.

"It’s not certain that they take them either, your pardon, hakkikt. Myself, I look for a fool to do a fool’s work; and Ehrran is the greatest fool I know."

Ehrran isn’t sitting here at this moment.

Jik drew in a long breath of smoke and let it go again. "It did give her the diversion she needed. And indeed, she isn’t sitting here at this moment. At cost to me, to Chanur—in fact, hakkikt, expensive as it may be to her in the long run, in the short, it served her very well. And what my partner is thinking of in her regard I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew. I think he has use for that hani he took with him, use he couldn’t get out of Chanur—Chanur being no fool."

Perhaps he has made use of all the hani. Perhaps he has secured his retreat from among us, and that is all he hoped to do—might that not be, Keia? I only wonder what you are doing here.

Perhaps he only followed her because he saw no way to stop her.

His ship has armaments, Sikkukkut said dryly. He was close behind her before her ship reached velocity.

I mean within his intentions he had no way to stop her.

And those intentions are?

Jik spread his hands. "I keep my agreements, hakkikt. And if he has abrogated our partnership— It was his best argument, his most desperate. His brain fuzzed and the drug meandered through his veins with the force of a tidal bore. If he has cast me off, hakkikt, I still keep my agreements with you. That’s my job to do; and if I fare better than he does, then that will prove to my Personage which agreement is the better to keep."

Mahen mentality.

"I tell you: it’s very like sfik. Give me status and I’ll outweigh him with the Personage at Maing Tol. It’s that simple. It’s not unknown that the mahendo’sat conclude conflicting treaties. And if my course looks wiser than Ana’s, mine will be honored and his will be set aside. If both of us look like fools, our Personage will lean on other agencies—nor can either of us know if our Personage is not concluding a third treaty with the stsho. If all fail him, he will fall and another Personage’s agents will be to deal with. The mahendo’sat is easy to predict and reasonable to deal with. It will always go for its greatest advantage."

Kk-kk-t. And will this Personage of yours stir forth in action or wait for events?

Outcome from the subordinates is always the deciding factor.

Where has Ismehanan-min gone? Where is this human fleet? What agreements has he made with the methane-breathers? What of your own?

They returned to old questions, the same questions, bringing the interview in its usual circle. "Again, mekt-hakkik, I don’t know. They may aim at Meetpoint. It’s not impossible the humans might come here. And I don’t know of any agreement with the knnn. I asked the tc’a to come here to assure that there was no panic on methane-side—"

Why did the knnn take your tc’a?

I don’t know. Who knows the knnn? Who can make an agreement with them—

"Except the tc’a. Except the tc’a, Keia. Tell me what dealings you have had with them."

God help me, none. He held up a protesting hand. I never deal with knnn. And carefully, with his sense in rags from drugs and drink: That’s Ana’s department.

You wish to alarm me.

"Hakkikt, I am alarmed. I don’t know whether Ana is in control of it, or whether the knnn are doing something independent."

In control of it.

It did sound stupid. Jik blinked slowly and took another drag at the smoke. I mean maybe he’s in consultation with them. The hakkikt feared the methane-breathers. Their irrationality, their technology, their vapors and tempers or whatever it was that sent them into frenzies, made the methane-folk a force no one sane wanted to stir up. Or they approached him. That was enough to send the wind up Sikkukkut’s back. "I don’t know, hakkikt. I swear. God witness. I don’t know. I did send a message to Maing Tol. So did Goldtooth. What was in his packet I don’t know."

What was in yours?

Jik shrugged. "My deal with you. My urging they accept this treaty. I tell you, hakkikt, I’d urge you—all respect, hakkikt, you let me go back to my ship. I have a personal interest in seeing this agreement of ours flourish. It’ll make me a very powerful man at home."

Give the kif something he understood, an ambition within kifish comprehension.

You’re attempting to use psychology on me, Sikkukkut said.

Of course I am. It also happens to be true.

"What happened to friendship? You know I know words like this. I am not stupid, Keia; I can study up on a concept without having the—internal circuitry to process it. Friendship means that you work in concert with Ismehanan-min. Loyalty means that you might become a martyr—I learned that word of ker Pyanfar. An appalling concept. But there it was in the mahen dictionary. I was curious. Martyr. Martyrdom. The whole of mahen history teems with martyrs. You place value on them. Like the hani. Have you wish to become one, Keia?"

Jik lifted his brows. Martyr is another word for fool.

I found no such cross-reference. Tell me: Keia: I want to know this: where do the knnn fit into Ismehanan-min’s arrangements? What arrangements has he made with the stsho?

He would betray them.

And your opinion of them?

They would betray us.

They have. Stle stles stlen is a deadly creature. For a grass-eating stsho. Is he dealing with this person?

I don’t know. No. Yes. God help him, the drug was fuzzing up his mind again. For a panicked instant he lost all the threads and got them back again, remembering his story. "But not at depth. Ana doesn’t trust the stsho. It’s mutual. Of course. The humans will come to Meetpoint—eventually. I think they’ll come there. And Stle stles stlen will Phase when gtst sees it. No sts-stsho can withstand that kind of blow to gtst reputation. Ana will take advantage of the confusion and seize the station. If he can."

And Akkhtimakt will allow this.

"Ana will have to anticipate him there. Perhaps—perhaps, hakkikt, Ana moved so quickly because he knows something of Akkhtimakt’s intentions. That there was no more time—in Ana’s estimation."

And why would he go with the hani?

Look for advantage. That questioning made him nervous. It was a new tack; he tried to think his way through it and in desperation went back to old answers. "I think—think he hopes to use Rhif Ehrran to get into Meetpoint itself without having stsho techs Phase and bring the systems down. Now you doubt this. I well know. But stsho react badly to surprises; from kif, they expect threats. Even from hani. But mahen threats unbalance them. They’re unaccustomed. Ehrran has a treaty with them. That’s all I can guess about it. She’s a key. That’s all. A fool and a key."

To do what?

"Hakkikt, I’m not privy to his plans."

Upon that, they were back to old matters. He sat and smoked while Sikkukkut thought that reply over once more, hunched faceless within the hooded robe, on his insect chair, the silver emblem of his princedom among kif shining on his breast stained with sodium-glow. Now and again from the shadows about them came the rustling of other robes, the restless stirring of subordinates who waited on their prince’s pleasure.

In a moment Sikkukkut would negligently lift his hand and those waiting about the room would close in, to bear their prisoner back downship and belowdecks to a different sort of questioning, now that he was sufficiently muddled and drugged. Jik did not let himself doubt that. He did not let himself hope that his argument might sway the hakkikt; least of all did he hope that his hani allies on The Pride of Chanur and his own crew back on Aja Jin would effect a rescue. That was the core of his defense here among the kif, the hard center to his resistance that let him sit here so placidly taking his smokestick down to a stub and watching heavy-lidded while Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin meditated what next to do to him; it was the center of all secrets he held, that he counted himself already dead, from which position it was possible to be quite patient with all manner of misery, since, dead, he was enjoying a degree of sensation and occasional pleasant interlude no one dead had a right to. Even when the pain was extreme, it was better than not feeling anything at all. Ever.

Besides, he was mahendo’sat, and curiosity was second nature to him: he was still picking up information, skilled as Sikkukkut was. He had learned, for instance, that Aja Jin, The Pride of Chanur, and Tahar’s Moon Rising were all at dock and all seemed free: that was very pleasant news. That Pyanfar Chanur was at hand to lend her experience to his own second in command was very good news; that Pyanfar still had credit enough with Sikkukkut to keep Dur Tahar’s throat uncut was excellent news as well, and if there was still enough hani left under Tahar’s red-brown hide, the pirate would adhere to her old enemy like burr to fur: hani paid their debts, if nothing else; and Tahar owed Chanur enough to stick to hell and back.

All of this he had learned in these sessions, as he knew that the human Tully was indeed safe aboard The Pride of Chanur, so Sikkukkut evidently valued Pyanfar more than he wanted the human to question and for other purposes, which was a mighty great deal of value for any kif to put on anon-kif. This was a double-edged benefit, of course: knowing kifish mindset, value-as-ally could turn with amazing swiftness to high-status-target. Friend in a kif’s doubletoothed mouth had no overtones of loyalty or self-sacrifice at all, was in fact nearly the opposite. Ally-of-convenience, rather. Potential rival, rather. Or poor fool.

The hani knew these things; and he knew well that his second in command knew. So they would both keep one finger to the wind; and he hoped that heads would stay cool if, as seemed possible and even likely, portions of himself turned up as decoration on Sikkukkut’s ship-ramp. He loathed stupidity, himself; he had sinned in that regard or he would not be here. But he truly abhorred the thought that he might singlehandedly serve as trigger to the undoing of the Compact. That was the one thing even a dead man could fear, the legacy he might leave the living for generations to come. That thought was the crack in his defense: Sikkukkut, being kif, taking no thought to posterity, was not capable of reaching that chink without a strong hint.

It was very easy for species to misunderstand each other, particularly when it came to abstracts.

It was possible, for instance, that he and Pyanfar had persistently misinterpreted Sikkukkut’s lack of metaphysics as a lack of emotional abstracts and irrational desires. He had come to know the kif with unwanted intimacy, and now suspected Sikkukkut of a kifish sentimentality, a preference for intimate targets for his most personal satisfaction, while Akkhtimakt was less personal in his mayhem, and more catholic in his attacks.

Akkhtimakt operates with the fist, Sikkukkut was wont to say, and I with the knife.

It was kifish poesy; it was also a profound statement of styles which might, if a mahendo’sat were well-educated in kifish mentality, say more than its surface content, and delve into those deep things language barriered away from translation between species.

He smoked the butt down to the last possible remnant, and carefully pinched it out instead of stubbing it, spacer’s affectation. Fire never hurt if one’s moves were definite and one’s mind was set firmly on the extinguishing and not on the fire. Spacer’s affectation, because when the fingers could bear it comfortably, it was safe to put away. He dropped the butt into the side of the pouch reserved for that and laid the pouch on the table. They never let him keep it. The pouch, with the liquor and Sikkukkut’s good humor, was delivered only in this room. So he let it lie, and met Sikkukkut’s eyes with lazy amusement.

Perhaps he perplexed the hakkikt with his attitude, a coolness between defiance and alliance and certainly not the behavior of a kif; perhaps that was what kept his head off the spikes outside. Sikkukkut gazed at him a moment in what seemed interest, then lifted his hand as he had done before, and signaled his removal.

*   *   *

There it goes, someone cried down the hall, and footsteps went thundering past Chur Anify’s door, disturbing her convalescence. "Kk-kk-kt," something else called out, and that brought Chur’s eyes open and set a little quicker pulse into her heart, so that needles jumped on the machine to which she was bound by a large skein of tubes, indicating an increase in pulse rate; in response to that, a flood of nutrients and appropriate chemicals came back into her bloodstream, automatically supplied.

Living bound to a machine-extension which thought it knew best what a body ought to feel was bad enough; lying there while riot went on in the corridor was another thing, and Chur edged her way off the bed, carefully (the spring extensions on the skein of tubings made it possible for her to reach the bathroom and saved her some indignities). In this case she gripped the various tubes in one fist to keep the extension from jerking painfully at the needles and padded over to the bureau where she had her gun, hearing the kifish clicking going on out there. Her head spun and her heart raced and the gods-cursed machine flooded her veins with sedative when it sensed her elevated pulse, but she made it to the door and pushed the button with the knuckle of her gun-hand.

The door shot open. She slumped lazy-like against the wall and stared at a kif who turned up directly opposite her and her pistol; then her eyes went strange-focused and her mind went here and there again, so that she had difficulty recalling where she was or why there should be a kif in The Pride’s corridor looking as horrified as a kif could look (not extremely) and why the peripheries of her vision informed her there were her cousins and a human standing there in shock and in company with this kif. It was a great deal to ask of a drugged hani brain, but the kif had its hands up and she was not crazed enough to go firing off a gun in a ship’s corridor without knowing why.

And while her brain was sorting through that crazy sequence, something small and black ran right over her foot on its way into her room. Hyaa! she yelled in revulsion, and the kif dived for the wall beside her as she swung to keep a bead not on the thing but on the kif. A hurtling mass of her friends overtook her from behind—not to help her, to her vast bewilderment: they grabbed her and the gun, while the kif flinched and pasted himself tight to the wall, making himself the smallest possible target.

Chur, her sister Geran was pleading with her, and she supposed that it was Geran prying the gun loose from her fingers: she was dizzy and her vision fuzzed. She heard her cousin Tirun’s voice, and human jabber, which was her friend Tully; and she dazedly let herself be dragged one step and another into the room, someone else taking the skein of tubes. A bell was going off: the infernal machine was telling off on her, that she was stressed.

Gods rot it, she cried, remembering. There’s something in here. And then she remembered that she had seen little black things before, on the bridge, and could not remember whether they were hallucinations or not, or whether her sister took her seriously. It was embarrassing to see hallucinations. And the cursed machine kept pouring sedative into her, so that they were going to leave her alone in here and drugged, with whatever-it-was: she did not want that either.

Look under the bed, Geran said, while Geran was putting her back into it, and she could not remember where the gun had gotten to, which was against ship’s rules, which was against all the regulations, to lose track of a firearm; and there was a kif trying to crawl under her bed. A sweat broke out on her, cold on her ears and nose and fingertips. Where’s my gun? she asked hazily, trying to sit up again; and There it is! someone shouted from the floor.

My gods, Chur murmured, and her sister put her flat on her back again. She blinked, blinked again in the crazed notion that there was a kif on his hands and knees at her bedside and people were trying to get her hallucination out from under her bed.

Sorry, Geran said fervently. Stay down. We’ve got it.

You’re crazy, Chur said. You’re stark crazy, all of you. Because none of it made sense.

But something let out a squeal under her bed, and something bumped against the secure-held braces, and there was an ammonia smell to the room which was no illusion, but a kif’s real presence.

He got, said Tully’s voice, and he loomed up by her bedside. Chur, you all right?

Sure, Chur said. She remembered at least where she was now, tied to a machine in na Khym’s cabin because she was, since the kif had shot her on a dock at Kshshti, too sick to be down in crew quarters; and Goldtooth had given them this fine medical equipment when he had met them here at Kefk, which was before the docks blew up in a firefight and she had been holding the bridge single-handed when the little black things started coming and going like a nasty slinking nightmare. There was a kif aboard, his name was Skkukuk, he was a slave and a gift from the hakkikt and he stood there with his black snout atwitch and his Dinner clutched in both bony hands as he stared at her. She curled her lip and laid her ears back, head scantly lifted. Out!

The kif hissed and clicked and retreated in profound offense, teeth bared, and Chur bared hers, coming up on her free elbow.

Easy, Geran said, pushing her back; and Tirun chased the kif on out, Haral’s sister Tirun, big enough to make a kif think twice about any argument, and owing that slight limp to a kifish gun some years back: Chur felt herself safe if Geran was by her and Tirun was between her and the kif. She looked up at Tully’s gold-bearded face and blinked placidly.

Gods-be kif, Geran said. Readout jumping like crazy—Tully, here, get this gun out of here.

No, Chur said. Drawer. Put it back in the drawer, Tully.

Out of here, Geran said.

Gods rot, Chur yelled, drawer! Living around Tully, a body got to thinking in pidgin and half-sentences. And the voice came out cracked. Tully hesitated, looking at Geran.

An even larger figure showed up in the doorway, filling it. Khym Mahn, male and tall and wide: What’s the trouble?

No trouble, Geran said. "Come on, close that door, everyone out before another of the gods-be things gets in. Who’s watching the godsforsaken kif?"

Put the gun in the drawer, Chur said firmly. Tully.

You leave it there, Geran said, getting up, as Khym vanished. She stood looking down a moment, while Tully did as he was told. Then the two of them stood there, her sister, her human friend; if there was ever truly such a thing as friendship between species. And the gods-be kif down the hall—Was that thing a friend, and did they have it running loose on the ship now? Had the captain authorized that?

O gods, Chur murmured, too tired and too sick for thoughts like loose kif, and for uncharitable thoughts toward Tully, who had done his unarmed best to save all their hides more than once. But it was in her heart now that she would not see home again, and that this

Reviews for Chanur's Homecoming

[john_t_stewart · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Chanur's Homecoming by CJ Cherryh. This is the third in a trilogy telling a story that follows on from a previous stand alone book that set the seeds for this story (The Pride of Chanur). The leads all come together as Pynafur starts to realise the inter species politics that had restricted her species to only one planet. When that planet is threatened she comes up with a plan to try and prevent disaster. This is a great finish to the story. I really think this is one of the best science fiction universes where different species interact in all too believable ways.

[atreic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I spent a large fraction of this year reading these books, and still have very conflicted feelings about them. I can't tell if the author intends you to feel slightly confused by the complex alien motivations, or if I am just Not Quite Bright Enough / versed in sci-fi story telling tradition, but I did spend large waves of time thinking 'what is going on? Why are they doing this?' Which meant the books were harder work (even if more rewarding) than reading Facebook, so they went rather slowly.

On the other hand, there is lots and lots to like in them. The aliens and their power structures are very alien, Hilfy's growth from young girl to competent spacer is well sketched out, and poor Pyanfer, trying to do the right thing even though she knows in the eyes of her world it will look exactly like the wrong thing. And I loved the games with gender, where the women travel the universe and trade, because the men must be sheltered and protected, not as a straight swap of roles, but because they are too angry and impulsive and strong and must be mollycoddled.

The second and third books don't really have an ending. The first book is 'Hani end up accidentally with a human, lots of people run around, there's a battle, everything is better.' And then books two to four tell a very similar story, but with a lot more detail. I would sort of like to reread them now I've made it to the end, because I might understand them better on the second time round, but not enough to spend months reading them all again!

[kevin678-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

slow, so slow.

[tadad_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

She finishes the adventures of the Pride's crew with a bang of non-stop action. This is the last volume where we see all the characters—Chanur's Legacy only has a couple of them in it—and I, for one, wish she'd write another one.  The mixture of all the mindsets, especially humanity seen through alien eyes, is a great vehicle.

[joeldinda_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Third of the trilogy that began with Chanur's Venture and The Kif Strike Back. The three read as though they were conceived as a single novel, but this one stands successfully alone, though the backstory probably works better because I'd read the others.

Pyanfar Chanur--the main character in these books--grows weary of being other folks' pawn and takes control of her destiny. This impacts many others' destiny as an unintended side effect. The joy, here, is watching all this work itself out. As always, Cherryh's stories are deeply imagined, well-written, and grounded in careful research.

I've commented before on this author's methods. She's unusually reticent about revealing more than her characters know, which can sometimes be frustrating. But it makes her stories rich in ways no other author I read can manage. This is a special story, and exceptionally well told.

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The further adventures of the cat-like Hani and the humans they have befriended, as they try to keep their place in galactic society. Politics and adventure combined, as the not quite military crew of what is supposed to be a merchant vessel try to protect their people. Excellent science fiction.

[pferdina · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The final book in the Chanur series (not counting Chanur's Legacy which takes place at a later time), the story follows Pyanfar Chanur and her ship through space as she tries to save her species from the kif.

[iftyzaidi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A strong finish to an excellent space opera series. Once again C. J. Cherryh's strength is the ability to give complexity and depth to inter-species relations and diplomacy, with all the [mis]understandings and doublethink involved. It can feel a little slow to start, but once you're involved in the universe the author draws, its gripping stuff.

[reading_fox · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Can Pyanfur survive more turmoil in the Compact with Chanur in the thick of it again? Another gripping read.

After re-read:

A bit of a slow start as the plot recaps where Py is and how she got to be in the mess she is. In fact a slightly slower book all round than the last one, because there is a lot ot be explained, a lot to be conjectured, and some intricate details of 3D space fighting to comprehend. The last is done remarkably well, without significant info dumps.

We take up the story still at Kefk. Py has been tasked by Sikkukkut to take a nominal friendly station Meetpoint (where all of Py's troubles began) in his name and with the aid of his ships. Py's just about got enough face to keep hold of the other hani inport and to convince the mahe Jik to keep wih her. However it remains to be seen if Goldtooth is working along the same lines. Meanwhile it transpires that teh Han have allied with Sikkukkut's enemy meaning Py is technically conducting treason. As she discovers so well might both the human Tully and Jik! To make maters worse her kiffish ally Sikkukkut has threatened her homeworld - the only hani world - which due to the complexities o hani politics is enough for her to swear lifelong bloodfued against him, a concept the kif, along with martyr and friend, cannot biologically understand. A climactic finish with a bit of an unlikely twist to resolve matters.

Gripping read - really really geos inot the depths of alien cultures and how cultures can just think along completely different lines. Another work of pure art from a master of what it means to be human.